Ewann likes music that goes fast. On the other hand, he might not really explain why. Maybe it puts him in a good mood. Or maybe it just sounds better than the slower melodies. What the high school student is sure of is that he got a taste for it thanks to TikTok. On the Chinese application, very popular with young Internet users, the videos are often accompanied by known music but whose tempo has been modified. When it is slowed down, it is called a “slowed + reverb”. And when it is accelerated, we then speak of “sped up”.
For neophyte ears, the sped up (sometimes also called “speed songs”) is disturbing. Imagine your favorite song, but with high-pitched vocals and a tempo that easily exceeds 150 BPM (beats per minute). The joyful intro ofEverybody wants to rule the world, from Tears for Fears, then becomes almost agonizing; the muscular synth of Midnight Demons spin into piece of techno.
These remixes are very present on Spotify (which even dedicates an official playlist to them), YouTube and especially TikTok, where the hashtag #spedup has already generated 9.9 billion views. The videos app, where audio matters as much as image, hosts many accounts that make and post sped up versions of famous songs. Often just illustrated by scrolling words, these videos are not made to be watched: they serve to spread their soundtrack, which will be picked up by other Internet users for their own content. We find for example the sped up remix of midnight demons on a contest to win a shower gel, a cosplay video (people dressed as anime or manga characters) or a tribute to Eddie, one of the heroes of the series Stranger Things.
Success and streaming
The phenomenon eventually caught the attention of the music industry, and several artists released official sped up versions of their popular tracks on TikTok. This is the case, for example, of DJ Alan Walker, with an album of sped up covers of his hits ; by Demi Lovato and her track Cool for the Summer ; or even of Michael Buble and Swaya title originally released in 2003 and brought up to date by a TikTok trend.
Publishing a sped up version is a good way to bounce back from the success of these remixes made by Internet users, and above all to benefit financially. If someone likes a speeded-up song, they’ll fetch it from a streaming platform to listen to, earning the record company revenue.
“I developed a kind of sixth sense for that: as soon as I listen to a song, I can imagine its accelerated or slowed down version. “, explains to Monde Jamil Ahmed, director of the independent English label Kurate Music.
« If one of our songs doesn’t do well on social networks, we’ll try to push its slowed + reverb version or its sped up version, hoping that they will go viral. »
Sometimes several variations are successful. This is the case of a title recently published by Kurate Music, Shootout, a collaboration between French pianist and composer Julien Marchal and Kazakh producer Izzamuzzic. The melancholy melody first exploded on TikTok but, now, sa version sped up (16 million plays on Spotify) is almost as popular than the original (24 millions).
“I see it as the symbol of our relationship to time and online consumption. On TikTok, we don’t have the right to be slow or silent”, Julien Marchal, French composer
Why are these remixes so popular? ” Speeding up or slowing down a piece can create some nice surprises. We focus on certain harmonies, we follow the melody better “, ventures Julien Marchal. “Honestly, I find it a bit gimmicky, he adds however. I see it as the symbol of our relationship to time and online consumption. It’s like when you listen to your voicemail messages on WhatsApp in a hurry, because you’re in a hurry. On TikTok, we have no right to slowness or silence. »
The taste for sped up effectively recalls the more global trend of ” speed listening » or « speed watching », which consists of consuming content (podcasts, YouTube videos, audio books) by accelerating the reading speed. It’s a genre that has its place on TikTok, where the videos are short and consumed in bursts. For Natacha, student and lover of the genre:
« I quickly pick up content that is too long on social networks. While the sped up, it goes fast and it makes me want to mover. I was already listening to electro or hyperpop… The sped up, it turns any song into something I want to listen to. It has even become a reflex: if I like a piece, I will immediately look for its accelerated version on YouTube. »
Sharing and counterculture
But despite its recent success, sped up remains the heir to an old online tradition: “nightcore”. This musical genre, born in the early 2000s, has had several forms. First close to trance music, it metamorphosed into a collective movement of Internet users having fun accelerating popular songs, published on YouTube.
“The accelerationist philosophy believes that by saturating the processes of capitalist society with it, it will end up self-destructing”, Emma Winston, English researcher
Often scorned for its amateur side and – will say the critics – not very original, nightcore is a richer practice than it seems. The English researcher Emma Winston, specializing in the anthropology of music, even sees in it a potentially anti-capitalist phenomenon. ” Accelerationist philosophy holds that by accelerating and saturating the processes of capitalist society, it will eventually self-destruct », she wrote in a research paper published in 2017.
« Since nightcore exploits the tools of capitalism, here mainstream music, and accelerates them, we can see it as a real counter-culture. »
Unlike content that has become highly professional on social networks, sped up, like nightcore before it, shows a great spirit of sharing and resourcefulness. It’s very easy to learn how to make your own remixes, thanks to the many tutorials available, and free editing software like Capcut (on mobile) or Audacity (on computer). Most often, accelerated songs are published at the request of other Internet users and the goal is rarely to make money: on TikTok or YouTube, it is impossible to monetize content (i.e. receive revenue) which is subject to copyright. The authors of sped up hope above all that their creations will go viral, and that they will please others.
« Sometimes my friends ask me to sped up their favorite songsexplains Ewann, who launched his own YouTube channel dedicated to sped up last year. I also spot the trendiest music on TikTok, or look at the ones I want to listen to. » On the French-speaking Internet, sped up versions of French songs, less common than remixes of English-language hits, are particularly popular. Ewann’s biggest hit to date is a sped up version ofattackfrom rapper PLK.
